Who would you be if you'd taken a different turn or made a different choice somewhere along your life path? I mean sure, that's the central premise of the Gwyneth Paltrow romance Sliding Doors, but it's also a real thing many working women wonder about.

Laurel Pinson had always wanted to be a marine biologist. "Jane Goodall: Water Edition" is how she described her ideal job—though she admits that this probably stems from an even earlier desire to be a mermaid princess. Luckily for her, there are now plenty of ways to live your mermaid dreamsIRL.

Annie Fox thought she might become a fashion designer. She started two lines, actually: Hot Hearts and Edwin's Revenge. (It was middle school, OK?)

One woman who never deferred a dream? Glamour's EIC/HBIC Cindi Leive, who, after a couple of media-related internships, has spent her whole career in magazine media. "I used to run home from school on days when I thought my Seventeen magazine was going to be in my inbox," says Leive of her early love of magazines. Magazines connected her, from her home in suburban Virginia, to girls around the world, and she's been enamored ever since. Leive may or may not have forced all the kids in her neighborhood to make a magazine with her, and she may have written all the articles herself when no one turned anything in on time.

But she knows that not everyone winds up in the "perfect career" right away. In fact, for many people, there might not be a "perfect career." "This idea that there is this perfect career…that's a really hard goal…and it leads to a ton of anxiety," says Leive, suggesting that instead women should find something they like to do, a place they like to do it, a way to make money from it, and just come at it with such enthusiasm that it becomes their passion. Passion is developed over time and with dedication. There is no lightbulb moment. No matter what your work is, it's work. You gotta make it what you want it and choose your own destiny.

How's that for sliding doors?

To hear Laurel, Annie, and Cindi's full conversation, listen to the "Lost Loves" episode of Glamour's podcast, Work Wives: